Thursday, May 10, 2007

You may have noticed that George Tenet prefers to talk about the aftermath of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, to wit, the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi insurgency. He admits that the CIA did get some things wrong—such as certifying the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when, in fact, those weapons and stockpiles had been destroyed years before, under UN supervision. In the next breath, Tenet takes pride that the CIA began warning the Administration early on about the insurgency. He deeply regrets that the White House, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon were not interested, and ignored the warnings.

What happened, it seems to me, was that prior to the invasion, Tenet was acting the part of a politician and policy maker, enabling a dumb project with bogus justifications. He was a participant in a fraud. Everybody was on board. Why would any CIA Director be at an Oval Office brainstorming session, trying to make the case for a preemptive war, and proclaim that the effort should be a “slam dunk”? Under any context, this remark is out of context for a CIA director. Afterward, to hear him tell it, he took on the traditional CIA Director’s role as an impartial intelligence gatherer, and reverted to the facts. Quite a change. Did he expect his former co-conspirators to respect the truth and reality post invasion, when they had been consumed with mendacity pre invasion? The same characters were in place and running the show.

A similar dichotomy applies to the Democratic Establishment in Congress, pre and post invasion. This is important. It is a major reason which explains why there will be no impeachment of Bush and Cheney. As best exemplified by John Kerry in his 2004 Presidential campaign against G.W. Bush, the Washington Democrats, with few exceptions, have been content and comfortable to criticize the execution of the policy, that is, �the conduct� of the war during the occupation. The Democrats thereby imply that they would somehow have done a better job. Up until relatively recently in this long war, there has been only mild criticism of the terrible idea to go to war in the first place, and no effort to examine the real motives behind the decision to invade. The Democrats don’t go there, except to say that they were misled. Why not?

As is well known but often conveniently forgotten, the Democratic Leadership in both houses of the U.S. Congress made a calculated political decision to authorize the Cheney/Bush White House to invade Iraq. The vote for war took place on Capital Hill on October 11th, 2002. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt led the charge. Senators Hillary Clinton, Diane Feinstein, Joe Biden, John Edwards, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman, among other ambitious Democratic mediocrities, big shots and blowhards, voted to authorize this ruinous war.

There was only one principled Senator of either party who stood up to the juggernaut, and made a fight of it. That man was Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia. He attempted to mount a filibuster against the war resolution, but he was cut off by a 75 to 25 vote. Byrd was regarded as an eccentric, a foolish old timer. He steadfastly refused to succumb to the hysteria. He knew what he was talking about, and recognized the Administration’s pack of lies for what it was when it was proffered. Byrd should now be regarded as a hero. He was right all along, but at the time his views were ridiculed.

Supposedly, all those brilliant Democrats in the Senate who voted to invade Iraq were alarmed by the Administration’s full-court-press propaganda campaign about Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction”. This is most unlikely. It assumes a level of ignorance and gullibility which is not credible. It is more likely that the Democrats and the brain-dead Republicans voted to invade and take over Iraq not because they regarded Saddam as a threat to the United States, but rather because, first and foremost, (a) they felt Washington could get away with it and (b) because the political payoff for war in the Congressional midterm elections of 2002 was deemed significant.

If you voted against the Administration, you could be smeared as soft on terrorism and national security. More important, you would be bucking the outsized political clout of the Israel Lobby, which was pushing for war on Iraq to the max, and had been for years. Moreover, after a decade of devastating economic sanctions, Iraq was going to be a cake walk, in any event. So it was a low risk proposition. To the professional politicians making their career calculations, the downside of launching the war appeared small and very manageable. The upside was impressive.

Well, the invasion itself, the fall of Baghdad and the toppling of Saddam, was a cake walk from a military standpoint. In point of fact, the U.S. won that war. This victory was a foregone conclusion. But Washington is not getting away with it. The rub has been the aftermath, the occupation and pacification of the country. That is the problem which confronts America today, an urban guerilla war, fueled by religious fanaticism and Arab nationalism. On top of that is a sectarian civil war among the inhabitants of the occupied country.

The UK medical journal The Lancet estimated back in September, 2006 that Iraq has endured over 600,000 deaths since the conflict began, and the UN has reported the displacement of 1.5 million Iraqis inside the country. These are some of the fruits of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. For the average Iraqi, it has been a disaster. The Democrats on Capitol Hill and everybody else are now focused upon how to deal with this catastrophe. The Democrats cannot address their initial, intellectually dishonest “me too” support for the invasion of Iraq in 2002 without drawing attention to their own gross hypocrisy and negligence. Instead, like George Tenet, they dwell upon the aftermath of the invasion and the current predicament.

Fine. Let’s focus upon the aftermath of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, the occupation, which every sane, objective observer now agrees is a train wreck. Who was in charge of that phase? It turns out that the granddaddy of the American foreign policy establishment, the former Secretary of State for Richard Nixon, the Mitteleuropa import, Dr. Henry Kissinger, was a prime architect of the occupation. This is something extraordinary which has been kept under wraps.

If nothing else, Bob Woodward’s last fat book on Iraq, State of Denial, has performed a valuable public service by ejecting the furtive Kissinger from the shadows. Woodward reports that vice president Dick Cheney confided to him (Woodward) in the summer of 2005: “I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and I guess at least once a month, Scooter [Libby] and I sit down with him.” [Page 406.] Woodward goes on to state: “The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making the former secretary the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.”

Why has this fact been kept sub rosa? One wonders. Why did Cheney telephone Woodward and blast him for revealing it in the book, before hanging up on him? What is going on behind the scenes? Rest assured, something rotten.

Please note that it was Kissinger’s protégé and partner, Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer III, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, Inc. for more than a decade, whom Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush placed in charge of the occupation of Iraq when Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush inexplicably cashiered the honest and fair-minded Lt. General Jay Garner, after scarcely a few weeks on the job. An item from the Sunday Telegraph of London dated October 15th, 2006 [”There was a plan for Iraq, but it was torn up”] is most informative. It summarizes the Kissinger connection to the Green Zone in Baghdad, as uncovered by Woodward…

When, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the retired US Army General Jay Garner was asked to take over the post-war humanitarian mission, he certainly possessed the credentials for the job. In 1991 he had headed Operation Provide Comfort, rescuing thousands of ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq after the first Gulf war. Who better, then, for the American Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to appoint to the job second time round.

Garner drew up detailed plans and, at his first briefing with President Bush, outlined three essential “musts” that would, he asserted, ensure a smooth transition after the war. The first “must”, he said, was that the Iraqi military should not be disbanded. The second “must” was that the 50,000-strong Ba’ath party machine that ran government services should not be broken up or its members proscribed. If either were to happen, he warned, there would be chaos compounded by thousands of unemployed, armed Iraqis running around. And the third “must”, he insisted, was that an interim Iraqi leadership group, eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term, should be kept on-side.

Initially, no one disagreed, according to State of Denial, the new book by the veteran Washington reporter, Bob Woodward. But within weeks of the invasion, Garner’s tenure as head of the post-war planning office was over: he was replaced by Paul Bremer, a terrorism expert and protégé of Henry Kissinger. Bremer immediately countermanded all three of Garner’s “musts”. [My emphasis.] When, eventually, Garner confronted Rumsfeld, telling him: “There is still time to rectify this,” Rumsfeld refused to do so.

And who was assisting Dr. Kissinger to program the new U.S. proconsul in Baghdad? Who was Paul Bremer’s primary contact at the Pentagon, overseeing the occupation from Washington, with the blessing of Don Rumsfeld? None other than the award winning hyperZionist zealot, Douglas “clean break” Feith, the man who had advised Likud icon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Bibi Nut & Yahoo) to attack Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in 1996 and tear up the Oslo “peace process”. Even Bibi regarded that advice as over the top.

According to Woodward’s initial book on the Bush Administration and the Iraq war, Plan of Attack, Douglas J. Feith, Esq., was characterized by General Tommy Franks, as “the f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth”. Perhaps U.S. General Franks, the man who directed the invasion of Iraq on the ground, misunderstood where Feith was coming from and what his priorities were. To Franks, Feith only looked stupid, because Franks did not understand him.

Feith was a protégé of “neocon” geopolitical grandee, Richard Perle. Feith is on the Advisory Board of the (U.S.) Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Feith is a face card in the deck of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, headquartered in Jerusalem. The law office he founded in 1986, Feith & Zell, is based in Israel, catering to Jewish-American “settlers” on the West Bank. Colonel Larry Wilkerson, who was aide-de-camp to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has stated he looked upon Feith as a card-carrying member of the Likud party. How did these important items in Feith’s background qualify him to oversee the U.S. military? In his capacity as the “undersecretary for policy” at the Pentagon, Doug Feith was the number three civilian in charge of the entire U.S. Defense establishment, behind Professor Paul Wolfowitz and Don Rumsfeld. Was that appropriate? Whose idea was it to put him there, creating such an obvious and enormous conflict of interest? Inquiring minds would like to know.

If “Operation Iraqi Freedom” may accurately be regarded as Wolfowitz’s War in its conception, then the aftermath of the war should be viewed as the Kissinger-Feith Occupation. It is the aftermath to the conquest, highlighted by the disastrous ukases delivered by Kissinger’s partner and frontman in Baghdad, Paul “Jerry” Bremer, which has effectively destroyed Iraq as a nation-state, brought about an internecine civil war, and created a quagmire for the United States military as well as a serious drain on the U.S. Treasury. The Democrats love to denounce this phase of the conflict, the occupation, but without naming names, aside from Bush and Cheney. Kissinger’s invisible hand in the undertaking was completely unknown until Woodward blew Kissinger’s cover. But most everyone on Capital Hill, every casual Washington intenditore, and every member of the American foreign policy community knew that Wolfowitz and Feith were the point men in charge of Iraq.

Could all of this destruction, bloodshed and anarchy in Iraq be due to gross incompetence? Is Doug Feith really “the f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth”? Or is he something else? Is Henry Kissinger the realpolitik genius which the Establishment press presumes him to be, or is he something more? Why was Paul Wolfowitz suddenly transferred from the Pentagon to the sanctums of the World Bank, when it became clear that Iraq was a debacle? Wolfowitz is not a banker or an economist. Like Kissinger, Wolfowitz is a history professor, specializing in international relations.

While we are asking perplexing questions, here are a few more. Is it possible that the entire fraudulent enterprise of Iraq--from “shock and awe” to “cut and run”--is not an accident caused by ignorance, hubris and mistakes? Could it be that the tragic end-result for Iraq and its people is not considered a disaster in certain geopolitical circles? Has it dawned on anybody that the destruction of oil-rich Iraq as a viable entity in the Middle East may have been on the short list of somebody’s private agenda, an agenda perhaps unknown even to Messrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld and the ever-clueless G.W. Bush?

Do not forget that the immiserization of Iraq by Washington commenced not with Wolfowitz’s War in 2003, but with the slaughter of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. It continued most dramatically but quietly with the meddlesome and insane policy of embargo and sanctions carried out during the reign of the “liberal” Democrat, Bill Clinton, and his meretricious Middle East foreign policy team of Samuel “Sandy” Berger, Madeleine “it’s worth it” Albright, Dennis Ross, and Australian import, Martin Indyk. This appalling chapter in U.S. Middle East policy has been delineated in the 1998 book by the English writer, Geoff Simons, entitled The Scourging of Iraq. A few lines from the preface to the second edition will give you and idea of what the people giving orders inside the White House were doing to Iraq in America’s name…

The US-contrived economic siege of Iraq has now lasted well over seven years, as I write, with, according to all estimates, millions of casualties--perhaps 2,000,000 dead through starvation and disease, more than half of them children, and many millions more emaciated, traumatised, sick, dying....

The United States is the conscious architect of this years-long genocide. Knowingly, with a cruel and cynical resolve, US officials work hard to withhold relief from a starving and diseased people. And the grotesque facts are not even disputed by Washington. Madeleine Albright, now Secretary of State, was prepared to assert in public that the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children was justified.

All this because Saddam Hussein deposed the Emir of Kuwait, the fake statelet concocted by the British, which every leader of Iraq going back to the 1930’s had regarded as a province of Iraq? All this because Saddam was a bad guy? Was Saddam a bad guy when he engaged in a near ten-year war against Iran, a war in which Washington supplied him with all manner of weaponry and material via Washington’s special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, while at the same time, Tel Aviv provided Tehran with similar supplies from its American stockpiles? Was Saddam a bad guy then? Was he somehow a worse guy when he invaded Kuwait? What does Kuwait have to do with anything? Was the brouhaha over Kuwait a cover story and a godsend for those in Tel Aviv and Washington who were seeking an excuse to destroy Iraq, after its war with Iran had run its course? It looks that way.

Of the Clinton years, the scourging of Iraq, one would do well to stop at this vantage point and ask three basic questions. (1) What in the world could possibly have motivated or justified the U.S. Government to take such a drastic course of action, resulting in the deaths of so many innocent civilians? (2) Why was there no outcry and virtually no protest in America against this policy at the time it was being carried out? (3) Were the American people deliberately kept in the dark about what was going on? These same three questions should be asked now, concerning current policies, which have resulted in the crucifixion of Iraq, perpetrated under the nominal leadership of G.W. Bush, but at the actual direction of Richard Cheney and his cabal of “neocons”.

Whatever the truth, one thing is certain. There is absolutely no accountability for this whole affair. None. Not for Clinton or his handlers and enablers. Not for Wolfowitz and Feith, who have left the Pentagon and washed their hands of the whole business. Not for Dick Cheney and George Bush, who are twisting in the wind, with nowhere to hide. Not for the Democrats who voted for Wolfowitz’s War, who then capitalized on the war to regain control of Capital Hill in 2006, and who hope to ride that wave to regain the White House in 2008.

And not for the teflon Professor Kissinger, who worked with Cheney and Bush in secret to devise an endgame for this outrageous and consistent policy--a policy spanning three Presidents and both political parties. Note that Kissinger can correctly point out that he was just offering advice from the sidelines and has no official responsibility for anything. Last but not least, there is no accountability whatever for Washington’s Israel Lobby and its minions, fronts and fellow travelers, whose fingerprints are all over the crime scene.

Do not hold your breath waiting for a long-overdue Congressional investigation into how and why America was railroaded into invading Iraq and who is responsible for destroying that country in the aftermath of the invasion, because there is not going to be one. Not now, not ever, no matter who is in charge of Congress.

Everybody is guilty, going back to 1990. Some individuals and groups are just far more guilty than others. Mission accomplished, indeed. But whose mission was it, what has been accomplished, and at what cost? It is clear that Uncle Sam has been taken for a ride, big time. The Iraqis, the American troops on the ground, and the American taxpayers are paying the price, in spades. There is no end in sight.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The director of international economics at the Council of Foreign Relations has launched a scathing attack on sovereignty and national currencies.

Benn Steil, writing in the current issue of CFR's influential Foreign Affairs magazine, says "the world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn."

In the article, "The End of National Currency," Steil clearly asserts the dollar and the euro are temporary currencies, perhaps necessary today. He argues "economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible."

His inevitable conclusion is "countries should abandon monetary nationalism."

Steil tempers his embrace of one world currency, writing, "Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area."

He concludes: "It is the market that made the dollar into global money – and what the market giveth, the market can taketh away. If the tailors balk and the dollar falls, the market may privatize money on its own."

The "tailors" Steil has in mind are the world's central bankers. He advises that the U.S. needs "to perpetuate the sound money policies of former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volker and Alan Greenspan and return to long-term fiscal discipline." In our current era of large and growing trade imbalances and over $35 trillion in GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) accounted federal deficits, these targets appear unlikely.

Steil concludes "the foreign tailors, with their massive and growing holdings of dollar debt" no longer feel "wealthy and secure" in the economic environment of a resultant falling dollar. The inevitable conclusion is that the dollar, too, may be on the way out.

Steil's essay is antagonistic to the ideas of sovereignty and national currencies.

He writes, "The right course is not to return to a mythical past of monetary sovereignty, with governments controlling local interest and exchange rates in blissful ignorance of the rest of the world. Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory."

Steil has ultimate confidence that economic globalism is irreversible, with national currencies doomed to the dustbin of history.

"In order to globalize safely," he advises, "countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today's instability."

Steil believes continued economic growth demands a global flow of capital unimpeded by the barriers inherent to "monetary nationalism." He asserts barriers created by monetary nationalism, such as national exchange rates or national monetary policy regimes, inevitably impede capital flow and cause currency crises as a consequence.

Since Steil believes that only globalism offers the unrestrained flow of capital needed for worldwide economic development, he contends even re-establishing a gold standard would be counter-productive when the only real solution is to abandon the idea that nations have any reason to create currencies at all.

Throughout his analysis, Steil cautions that dependence upon the dollar or the euro as global currencies is not fundamental to his argument.

He stresses that "the dollar's privileged status as today's global money is not heaven-bestowed. The dollar is ultimately just another money supported only by faith that others will willingly accept it in the future in return for the same sort of valuable things it bought in the past."

In other words, if the institutions of the U.S. government fail to validate that faith, the dollar, too, merits being abandoned.

"Reckless U.S. fiscal policy is undermining the dollar's position even as the currency's role as a global money is expanding," he notes.

Steil imagines the ultimate solution is to privatize a global currency through a gold-based international monetary system.

"A new gold-based international monetary system surely sounds far-fetched," he concludes. "But so, in 1900 did a monetary system without gold. Modern technology makes a revival of gold money, through private gold banks, possible even without government support."

WND previously reported Steve Previs, a vice president at Jeffries International Ltd., in London, told CNBC Nov. 27, 2006, the amero "is the proposed new currency for the North American Community which is being developed right now between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico."

A video clip of the CNBC interview with Jeffries is now available for viewing at YouTube.com.

WND also has reported a continued slide in the value of the dollar on world currency markets could set up conditions in which the adoption of the amero as a North American currency gains momentum.

The amero was first proposed as a North American unitary currency by Canadian economist Herbert G. Grubel of the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia.

In a publication entitled "The Case for the Amero," Grubel argued that a North American monetary union would eliminate the costs of currency trading and risk, furthering the development of a North American common market along the model of the European Common Market.

Robert Pastor, director of the Center for North American Studies at American University, supported Grubel's arguments for the amero.

In his 2001 book entitled Toward a North American Community, Pastor supported Grubel's suggestion that the creation of the amero would be accompanied by the creation of a Central Bank of North America, similar to the European Central Bank.

Grubel's argument on the amero has also been published as a book in Spanish, entitled El Amero: Una Moneda Comun para Améica del Norte, published by CIDAC (Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo), the Center for Research for Development in Mexico.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

I suppose there was a time in American politics when there was a significant difference between conservatives and liberals, between Republicans and Democrats, and between Christians and unbelievers. However, with only limited exceptions, that time has largely gone. When it comes to the salient issues that are currently waging war against America's future survival, it is extremely difficult to distinguish those differences.

If one removes the issues of abortion and gay rights from the debate, there is precious little that distinguishes the modern Christian conservative from his liberal counterpart.

Federal spending sure doesn't apply. President George W. Bush and his fellow "conservative" Republicans have the dubious distinction of outspending practically every administration and Congress during the entire 20th century. Only the Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson administrations compare to the insatiable spending habits of the current administration.

Then there is the illegal alien invasion currently taking place in America. What was virtually nonexistent twenty years ago and only a minor nuisance before Bush was elected President has now become a full-fledged assault that threatens our country's very survival. And remember, the Republican Party controlled the entire federal government during the six years that the bulk of this invasion was taking place. And, except for a few conservative congressmen (mostly in the House of Representatives), not only did they do nothing to stop it, they sat back and watched as President Bush actively encouraged and facilitated it, something he is doing to this very day.

Then there is the obsequious manner in which our national Christian leaders treat "big-name" Republican presidential contenders. This is especially disconcerting when one considers that many of these contenders are people with very dubious track records: either bitterly betraying conservative principles or, in some cases, openly subscribing to positions that are downright antithetical to those principles.

For example, conservatism does not have a worse Judas turncoat than Newt Gingrich. His track record as Speaker of the House is more than dismal. Just talk to any of the members of the House freshman class of 1995. Ask Joe Scarborough. Ask Steve Largent. Ask Bob Barr. Ask them if Newt Gingrich is a conservative.

They would, no doubt, remind you that it was Newt Gingrich who used the power of the Speaker's office to rush GATT and the WTO through a lame-duck session of Congress before the more conservative '95 freshman class arrived on Capitol Hill, because he knew they would derail passage of these two draconian pieces of legislation.

I'm sure they would also remind you that one of the first things Gingrich did after being elected to Congress in 1978 was support the creation of the Department of Education, and Most Favored Nation trade status for Red China. They would also remind you that Newt Gingrich voted for taxpayer dollars to be used to facilitate rade with the communist Chinese.

Furthermore, does anyone need to be reminded that Newt Gingrich is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which is nothing more than a cabal of elitists dedicated to the promotion of global government?

Gingrich proved himself to be such a Judas that he had to resign or face ouster by the very conservatives he professed to lead. And if one wants further testimony regarding Gingrich's infidelity, ask his first two wives.

Yet, Newt Gingrich is being lauded and cheered as a "true American statesman," to quote one national Christian leader. That leader also said, "Mr. Gingrich is certainly one of the brightest men I know in public life today, and he is becoming one of our great ambassadors for reawakening the spirit of our Founders."

Then there is Rudy Giuliani. The same Christian leader who lavished praise upon Newt Gingrich recently wrote this about Rudy Giuliani: "I personally have great respect for Mr. Giuliani in terms of his leadership in law and order and national defense issues. In these areas, I believe he would be a potentially great president."

This seems to suggest that if Giuliani could just convince us that he is now genuinely "pro-life" and "pro-family," we Christian conservatives should support him. But is that really all there is that qualifies a candidate for President? Would Giuliani truly be a "potentially great president" when it comes to "law and order" issues?

Are we supposed to forget that Rudy Giuliani has been one of the most outspoken proponents of gun control in the entire country? Does it not matter that for years Giuliani used the power of his office to disarm honest American citizens and trample the Second Amendment?

For example, Gun Owners of America has this to say about Rudy Giuliani's track record on gun control: "[T]he record shows that the Mayor continually tried to export his gun control agenda to the rest of the nation.

"In 1993, before even being sworn in as mayor, Giuliani met with then-President Clinton at the White House to discuss national gun registration. Giuliani supported the Brady bill, which had recently passed, but argued that it didn't go far enough.

"The President, largely crediting Giuliani for the idea, enthusiastically sent Attorney General Janet Reno off to develop a gun licensing and registration system . . . .

"In May of 1994, as the battle over the ban on certain semi-automatic firearms reached its height, Giuliani threw his support behind the ban. On the eve of the final vote, he noted that so-called assault weapons 'have no legitimate purpose.'

"When the ban passed, Giuliani commented that, 'This is an important step towards curtailing the indiscriminate proliferation of guns across the nation.'"

Is this the kind of "law and order" that Christian conservatives expect from their elected leaders today? If so, they should throw away the Bill of Rights and embrace the Communist Manifesto, because the latter more closely mirrors Giuliani's brand of law and order.

Dear fellow Christians, please wake up! Gun control is not a secondary issue. Runaway, out-of-control federal spending is not a secondary issue. The invasion of America by millions of illegal aliens is not a secondary issue. The creation of a North American Community, which integrates the governments of Mexico, Canada, and the United States, is not a secondary issue. The NAFTA superhighway currently being constructed is not a secondary issue. The abuse of our Bill of Rights under the Patriot Act is not a secondary issue. The blatant disregard for constitutional government by our elected leaders is not a secondary issue.

There is more to a candidate's qualification for public office than his or her opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Are we really so shallow and undiscerning that we cannot see what our political and corporate leaders are doing to our country? Do we not recognize evil when we see it? Do we really think that we can ignore these issues and not pay the consequences?

We are in desperate need of leaders who will distinguish themselves as standing foursquare on the fundamental principles upon which America was founded. We need leaders who will respect the U.S. Constitution and who will aggressively stop the invasion taking place across our southern border. We need leaders who will rein in federal spending and reduce the size and scope of the federal government. We need leaders who will refuse to allow the United States to be integrated into a North American Community of any kind.

And most of all, we need Christian conservatives to wake up to what is going on in this country, and to stop trying to grovel before the neocons in the Republican Party, and to start acting like real conservatives again.

No less than ten Republican hopefuls in the 2008 White House race participated in the first national GOP debate last Thursday, May 3. Even before the 90-minute debate had concluded, media pundits were declaring that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had won.

Even my friend, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough wrote, "During the debate I was flooded by e-mails from Republican activists and voters who told me Romney was dominating the debate." Scarborough went on to say, "Among those Red State Republicans (who will elect their party's next nominee), Mitt Romney won while McCain and Giuliani failed to meet expectations."

As with most political pundits, the entire focus of the debate centered on only three contenders: Arizona Senator John McCain, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Romney. In fact, in his post-debate summary, Scarborough's only reference to anyone other than these three names was a fleeting mention of the "Sam Brownbacks of the world."

Yet, when one looks at MSNBC's own poll, a much different picture emerges. According to this poll, there was a clear winner alright, but his name was not McCain, Giuliani, or Romney. It was Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

Consider the before and after polls, as they appear on MSNBC's web site. See it at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18421356/

The after-debate poll numbers for six of the "lesser" contenders were almost identical to the before-debate numbers. Almost identical. I'm speaking of Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, and Tommy Thompson. It is safe to say, that none of these men obtained any significant support as a result of their debate performance. However, the same is not true for Ron Paul.

Before the debate, Paul's polling numbers had a negative rating of 47%. His neutral number was 44%, and his positive number was a paltry 9%.

Compare those numbers with those of the three media favorites, McCain, Giuliani, and Romney.

John McCain's pre-debate polling numbers included a negative rating of 40%. His neutral number was 29%, and his positive rating was 31%. Rudy Giuliani's pre-debate poll numbers included a negative rating of 34%, a neutral rating of 25%, and a positive rating of 41%. Mitt Romney's pre-debate negative number stood at 41%. His neutral number was 31%, and his positive number stood at 28%.

Obvious to just about anyone is that Rudy Giuliani took a commanding lead into the first GOP debate. His positive number eclipsed his closest rival by more than ten percentage points.

However, everything changed immediately following the debate. Giuliani's positive number fell from 41% to a pitiful 24%. His negative number rose from 34% to 42%. And his neutral number rose from 25% to 34%. Clearly, Rudy Giuliani lost a lot of support in that first debate.

What about John McCain? Once again, his debate performance did not help his campaign. In this regard, Joe Scarborough has it right.

McCain's positive rating fell from a pre-debate high of 31% to a post-debate low of 19%. His neutral rating jumped from 29% to 37%.

Remember, media pundits seem to agree that Mitt Romney was the big debate winner. So, how do his numbers stack up?

Romney's post-debate positive rating DROPPED from a pre-debate high of 28% to 27%. His negative number also fell slightly from 41% to 37%. And Romney's neutral number rose from 31% to 36%. I ask you, Do those numbers reflect victory? I think not.

Compare the numbers of McCain, Giuliani, and Romney to those of Ron Paul's. Remember, before the debate, Paul scored a dismal 9% positive score. But after the debate, Paul's positive score skyrocketed to an astounding 38%. In other words, Ron Paul's positive number is eleven percentage points higher than his closest rival. Paul's negative number went from a pre-debate high of 47% to a post-debate low of 26%. His neutral number also dropped significantly from 44% to 36%.

Without question or reservation, Ron Paul was the clear and obvious winner of the first GOP debate, at least according to the more than eighty-four thousand respondents (at the time of this writing) who took the MSNBC online poll.

Which leads to another question: Are the media elite watching the same debate that the rest of us are watching or are they looking at something else? I think they are looking at something else. And that something else is money.

They see only the GOP's "Big Three" as having the potential to raise $50 million-plus for their respective presidential campaigns. That means, in their minds, all others are also-rans who have no chance to win and are therefore ignored. And let's face it folks, when it comes to Washington politics, there are only three considerations that even register with big-media: money, money, and money.

However, make no mistake about it: Ron Paul clearly and convincingly won the first GOP debate. It would be nice if someone in the mainstream media would acknowledge that fact.

In addition, someone in the mainstream media should ask why Ron Paul did so well in post-debate polling, because I predict that Paul's upcoming performance in South Carolina on May 15 will be equally spectacular. He may even emerge from that debate as a serious challenger for the nomination. I personally hope he does.

Ron Paul is the only candidate on the Republican ticket who would seriously challenge the status quo of the neocons currently running our country into the ground. He has a voting record unlike anyone in Congress.

As has been reported by many, Ron Paul has never voted to raise taxes, has never voted for an unbalanced budget, has never voted for a federal registration on gun ownership, has never voted to raise congressional pay, has never taken a government-paid junket, and has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch of the federal government. Furthermore, he voted against the Patriot Act and was one of only a handful of congressmen that voted against the Iraq War.

Furthermore, it was Ron Paul who introduced the Sanctity of Human Life bill in Congress, which, had it passed, would have granted federal protection to every unborn child and would have nullified Roe v Wade. In addition, Ron Paul is one of the biggest opponents to Bush's push to integrate the United States into a trilateral North American Community. Ron Paul also supports ending the Income Tax and dismantling the Internal Revenue Service. In short, Ron Paul is big-government's worst nightmare.

All of the above became obvious to voters during the six-plus minutes that Ron Paul had the national spotlight. That is why his poll numbers surged following the debate. Imagine what could happen if Paul is given more time to articulate his constitutionalist agenda. He could win more than the debate--he could win the election.